


Vision walls fall all revealing

by uumuu



Series: One more soul to the call [1]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Gen, Implied/Referenced Incest, Major Character Undeath, No Dialogue, Non-Canonical Character Death, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-23
Updated: 2017-02-23
Packaged: 2018-09-26 13:04:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9898340
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/uumuu/pseuds/uumuu
Summary: Maedhros and Maglor find each other again at the start of a new life.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Fill for the 'The Tides of Time' square in my GenPrompt Bingo card. 
> 
> Set before _The Warlord_ in the _One more soul to the call_ verse.

The Eldar no doubt reckoned them _vanwë_ , castaways on the course set down by the Music at the beginning of Time, a course which had been punctually, precisely been given life by their own deeds. To Men they were but relics of the past, matter of songs, shadows their rapidly trickling years would soon sweep away.

Neither belief was devoid of truth. 

When Maedhros found Maglor again, after his death and unforetold rebirth, he knew they were both torn out of the fabric from which the life of the incarnates had been cut.

Emerging from his cradle of light had been a vertigo of wonder at a world which appeared to him in all its infinite vastness – a vastness he could have held in the palm of his right hand. His new body didn't function like the one he had shed. He could move as he had moved before, but had no bodily needs. He felt no hunger, no thirst, no fatigue or drowsiness. His emotions too were keener, rawer, no longer shielded and dulled by the more immediate impulses that had overlaid them. Touching the bark of a tree was like being scalded, and the breeze that tangled in his hair had the force of a whip-lash. The bluntness of the world nearly overcame him as he took his first few steps in it like a toddler left to face a steep descent on his own, but he quickly learnt to use that bluntness to his own advantage. 

He also learnt, as he listened to his brother's voice, that the Music was something that could be altered, or improvised, or simply played at a different tempo.

Maglor sang – a song that was a threnody, a fierce requiem in defiance of the Valar, of the crashing waves, and of his own agony. He sang of war, of defeat and never-ending rage. The Silmaril was clutched tightly in his right hand. All his lingering strength he seemed to have poured into that one gesture, even with his skin raw and oozing blood well beyond the wrist. 

Maedhros listened from afar at first, his whole body basking in the notes that had led him to his brother.

Maglor didn't react to his presence, when Maedhros weightlessly trod upon the rocky shore where he stood, exposed to the wrath of the sea which had devoured Beleriand, with all its life and all its death. 

The setting sun darted blazing rays over the rim of a jagged shoreline, tingeing everything red. Red, rich bright red. Blood and fire. Red and orange and yellow, like the bed of molten rock upon which Maedhros's body of flesh had been consumed in the same manner his father's had been. 

Maedhros lowered his face onto his brother's jet black hair, dishevelled by the wind and smelling of sea-salt. Their curly texture sufficed to reassure him both of his brother's endurance and to confirm his own existence, to confirm that he was still himself with the oddly hushed, tender familiarity of the sensation it caused.

“Dearest brother of mine,” he murmured.

He had not been certain he had a voice, but when he attempted to turn his thoughts into sound, Maglor reacted to the words he formed. Maglor had always been particularly responsive to voices. He had studied their inflections and appraised them with the same deftness and relish with which their father had assessed metals. 

Maglor's own voice rose to a cry. Maedhros crossed his arms over his brother's narrowed waist, over what remained of his armour, holding him gently.

Maglor's wounded hand throbbed, then jolted. Blood dripped steadily from it onto the ground, and it was the only mark of the passage of time Maedhros remained aware of. 

He couldn't have told how long they stood there. The sea was unchanging in its ever renewed onslaughts, the unrelentingness with which it lashed the rocks in front of them, and soon he stopped paying any heed to the risings of the sun and moon. Time itself had ceased to matter to him. Time was a tangle of thread of which he now discerned both ends. 

Sometimes he wondered what would happen if he pulled on either of those, and only secondarily marvelled at the fact that he was certain he knew how to. 

Their father had wanted them to be free. What he had acquired was a liberty infinitely surpassing what his father had envisioned. Maedhros felt joy like an already half-forgotten quickened blood pulse. His father surely did too.

After what could have been days, months, or even decades, Maglor's opponent finally revealed herself. 

Uinen emerged from the boisterous waves, the briny water casting a mantle about her like diamond-studded gossamer. She stretched her arms open, as if rallying every last particle of a long-nursed rancour. The sea swelled, and a wave much larger than the ones which had until then crashed on the shore reared towards them.

Maedhros wished for it to stop and the Silmaril flashed. 

The wave broke before it could reach them, falling at their feet in a rain of shattered crystals.

Uinen's wrath turned to ice, and the sea began to freeze. 

Maglor's song was undimmed, and the ice could not encase his feet. The last of his blood flowed out, drop after tiny drop, its echoing _drip drip drip_ thundering in Maedhros's ears, and seeped into the frozen water, staining its purity with a dawn-like halo.

When he had sung all that he needed to sing, Maglor's voice quieted down, and died. The silence rippled through space, the very air seemed to come to a standstill and hung over that marred stretch of sea like a pall, crushing. 

Uinen gave a deafening cry, splashing head first into the ice. 

Maedhros knew what would happen next. 

Their father's body had crumbled to a trail flickering ash, Maglor's slipped from his hold in a drizzle of golden petals that danced about him before melting into the ice as Maglor's blood had.

The Silmaril which was now part of Maedhros as much as he was part of it glowed to its fullest, in unison with the one his brother had held. They set sea and sky ablaze, brighter than any sunset or any conflagration, spilling brutal light into every tiny nook of the space around him.

He stepped onto the spot where Maglor had lived out the last instants of his first existence, and the mass of ice came to life in a sizzling rumble. Blocks split and crashed, lurched forward and sank into a liquid so dark and viscous it could have all been blood. A long ragged block surged like a giant killer whale, bearing Uinen with it, remained aloft for a split second and plunged into the sea again, carrying the helpless maia along.

Amidst the glare and cacophony, Maglor's fëa rose from the water. Maglor was water. Liquid, scintillating black into which anything could drown. Maedhros reached out towards the wave of obsidian, and it whirled towards him. Maglor took shape in his hold, long limbs no longer made of flesh but of the very same matter their father had brought into being. Maglor was remade, and stood pressed to him. 

They stared into each other's eyes, giddy with triumph and new-born hope.

Then Maedhros kissed Maglor's mouth, a ripple of fire, lay his cheek against his brother's and smiled against his ear. 

“Sing for me, Brother.”

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from the song Pray for Rain by Massive Attack.
> 
> _Vanwa_ means 'gone, no longer to be had' in Quenya.
> 
> This is an idea I had a long time ago, partially inspired by a video of a glacier calving.


End file.
